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In Luke 17:20, the
Kingdom of God is said to be an interior state; "It's
within"
From: "jagbir singh" <www.adishakti.org@gmail.com>
Date: Fri Jul 23, 2004 10:16 am
Subject: In Luke 17:20, the Kingdom of God is
said to be an interior state; "It's within"
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--- In
shriadishakti@yahoogroups.com,
"jagbir singh"
<adishakti_org@y...> wrote:
>
> On December 9, 1996, at 5:45 a.m. Kash was again asked
about his
> previously mistaken `out-of-body' belief. He still
insisted
> that it is impossible to believe that one is within
the body —
> even after being enlightened by the Great Adi Shakti
that
> everything is within the Sahasrara!
>
> In other words, despite his misconception being
corrected by the
> Great Supreme Spirit, he still could not feel or
remember this fact
> whenever he entered his own Thousand-Petal Lotus. He
still thought
> he left his body and went out into the Universe to the
place humans
> call the Kingdom of God. According to Kash, it is
impossible for
> one to know that they are in their own Sahasraras. It
is impossible
> to feel the Kingdom of God within the human body.
>
> It is just impossible to comprehend, while being
within the
> Sahasrara, that this gross physical world exists
outside! In
> other words, on Earth it is impossible to comprehend
the subtle
> spiritual Sahasrara within. It is just as difficult
within the
> Sahasrara to comprehend that this gross physical Earth
exists
> without.
>
> On October 9, 1997, at 19.00 p.m. he was asked if the
Spiritual
> World was as real as this Earth, i.e., was it as
tangible as
> watching television, talking with his family and all
the normal
> activities that makes physical life so conscious and
real. He
> replied that not only is the Kingdom of God really
real, just as
> this physical world, but also "better, quieter and
more peaceful."
>
According to the renowned historian Elaine H. Pagels the
Gospel of
Thomas "does not tell the story about the life and death
of Jesus,
but offers the reader his `secret teachings' about the
kingdom of God.
This book opens with the lines, "These are the secret
words which the
living Jesus spoke, and the twin, Didymos Judas Thomas
wrote them
down." Then there follows a list of the sayings of
Jesus. ... Some of
these sayings are familiar. We know them from Matthew
and Luke —
Jesus said, "I have come to cast fire on the earth." Or
"Behold, a
sower went out to sow," and so forth.... Others are as
strange and
compelling as Zen koans. My favorite of these is saying
number 70,
which says, "If you bring forth what is within you, what
you bring
forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is
within you,
what you do not bring forth will destroy you." The
gospel opens as
Jesus invites people to see....
The Gospel of Thomas also suggests that Jesus is aware
of, and
criticizing the views of the Kingdom of God as a time or
a place that
appear in the other gospels. Here Jesus says, "If those
who lead you
say to you, "look, the Kingdom is in the sky," then the
birds will
get there first. If they say "it's in the ocean," then
the fish will
get there first. But the Kingdom of God is within you
and outside of
you. Once you come to know yourselves, you will become
known. And you will know that it is you who are the
children of the living father."
In this gospel, and this is also the case in the Gospel
of Luke, the
Kingdom of God is not an event that's going to be
catastrophically
shattering the world as we know it and ushering in a new
millennium.
Here, as in Luke 17:20, the Kingdom of God is said to be
an interior
state; "It's within you," Luke says. And here it says,
"It's inside
you but it's also outside of you." It's like a state of
consciousness. It's hard to describe. But the Kingdom of
God here is
something that you can enter when you attain gnosis,
which means
knowledge. But it doesn't mean intellectual knowledge.
The Greeks had
two words for knowledge. One is intellectual knowledge,
like the
knowledge of physics or something like that. But this
gnosis is
personal, like "I know that person, or do you know so
and so." So
this gnosis is self-knowledge; you could call it
insight. It's a
question of knowing who you really are, not at the
ordinary level of
your name and your social class or your position. But
knowing
yourself at a deep level. The secret of gnosis is that
when you know
yourself at that level you will also come to know God,
because you
will discover that the divine is within you." 1
According to the Catholic Church the "divine plan of
Revelation is
realized simultaneously "by deeds and words which are
intrinsically
bound up with each other" and shed light on each other.
It involves a
specific divine pedagogy: God communicates himself to
man gradually.
He prepares him to welcome by stages the supernatural
Revelation that
is to culminate in the person and mission of the
incarnate Word,
Jesus Christ." 2
1. Elaine H. Pagels, PBS and WGBH/FRONTLINE, 1998
2. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Interdicasterial
Commission), Catechism
of the Catholic Church
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